International Borders: 5 Things Men Should Know

International Borders: 5 Things Men Should Know

3- Almost every country has an ongoing international border dispute

Another thing you didn't know about international borders is how few of them are beyond dispute.

No source of information on world borders is more often updated with more accurate information than the online CIA Factbook. Its field listing of international disputes broadly addresses everything from fresh unilateral claims to age-old bilateral disputes, on land and at sea, on paper and in practice.

The forward-thinking standout is the political entity the European Union. In 1997 the Treaty of Amsterdam largely dissolved the geopolitical borders between its 22 member states, permitting free movement for its citizens and setting an example for the rest of the world.

4- The Korean DMZ has also served as a tourist destination

Almost without question, the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea stands as the world's most intense and potentially dangerous international border. U.S. and South Korean troops often exchange fire with troops in North Korea, and tensions are always running high. Curiously, this has also made the DMZ a tourist trap. North Korea, in desperate need of revenue, has on many occasions opened up parts of its side to tourist groups from Japan, and groups in South Korea have done the same, with each using the opportunity to press their politics and amp up the propaganda.

5- Almost 400 die along one international border every year

The last thing you didn't know about international borders is just how deadly some can be, or at least one in particular.

In the mid-1990s, the United States launched Operation Gatekeeper, a policy of tightened control over the border shared with Mexico. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), this policy has resulted in the border deaths of over 5,600 Mexican immigrants in the last 15 years, or just under 400 people each year.

A similar battle of statistics has heated up between the two countries in the wake of the most recent events, as authorities on both sides fired off statistics designed to suggest that the other side was more responsible. Mexican authorities claimed that the number of countrymen killed or wounded by U.S. border patrol agents has risen from 5 in 2008 to 17 in the first half of 2010. In response, Border Patrol counterclaimed that its agents are the subjects of dozens of assaults every year along the border, with the heaviest activity taking place at the El Paso-Juarez crossing.